Hospitality · SEO
SEO for hospitality businesses
A pub with a garden. A bar showing the match. A café that opens early. A room for forty. People search by what they need as much as by name, and Arête's SEO work is built to make your venue the answer.
From £349 per month, fixed fee
The situation
Why your customers are searching.
For most venues, your Google Business Profile does more work than your website. It shows hours, photos, reviews and directions before anyone clicks through. Private-hire and function-room searches are more deliberate and worth more, and they reward venues with specific pages about their spaces. Getting both right comes down to accuracy, structure and steady effort. No tricks.
What sends them looking
- Midweek trade is flat, and your fixed costs aren't.
- The function room, garden or upstairs space sits empty on nights it could be earning.
- Delivery and booking platform commission has become a line in the accounts you notice every month.
- You're launching live music, a quiz or a supper club, and it needs a crowd from week one.
- The season's turning, and you want tourists, students or summer crowds to know about you before they arrive.
The problem
What costs hospitality businesses work.
Where the work slips away
- When hours, kitchen times and event dates differ between your website, Google and social pages, you lose trust and footfall.
- Private-hire enquiries come in by phone, DM and email with no standard form, so details go missing and follow-ups slip.
- A quiz, a gig or a big match needs a few days of promotion to people nearby. One post on the day gets lost.
- Your audience shifts through the year, from locals to tourists to Christmas bookers, and the marketing has to shift with it.
- Delivery apps and booking platforms bring visibility, then take a cut of every order and keep hold of the customer relationship.
What makes customers hesitate
- Regulars and word of mouth have always kept the place going. Why pay for marketing now?
- Someone already posts on Instagram, so what would ads or a new website add?
- Boosted posts brought likes before, but nobody could say whether they put anyone through the door.
- Running a venue leaves little time for sending photos, event details and sign-offs.
How it helps
What SEO changes.
- Your Google Business Profile stays accurate, with special hours for bank holidays, events and seasonal changes.
- Pages for private hire, functions and each of your spaces target the searches organisers make.
- Beer garden, live sport, dog-friendly, step-free: the features people search for get spelled out on your site.
- Content is planned from search data for your area and your kind of venue. No guesswork.
What you get
Google Business Profile management
Categories, attributes, photos, special hours and posts kept current, plus a routine for replying to reviews.
Function room and private-hire pages
Pages written for searches like birthday, wake and Christmas party venues in your area, with capacities and an enquiry form.
Feature and occasion pages
Content for the features that drive local searches: beer gardens, Sunday roasts, live music, sports screenings.
Structured data for venue details
Schema markup for opening hours, location and events, so search engines read those details correctly.
Seasonal search planning
A calendar that gets pages and profile updates in place ahead of summer, Christmas and local events, so they're live before demand picks up.
Measurement
The enquiries that count, tracked properly.
What counts as an enquiry
- A private-hire enquiry with the date, numbers and occasion already filled in.
- A table or area booked straight through your own site.
- A ticket or place booked for a quiz, a gig or a ticketed night.
- A tap to call, or a request for directions from Google Maps or your website.
What gets tracked
- Calls, direction requests and website clicks from your Google Business Profile.
- Where you show up for private-hire and function-room searches in your area.
- Organic visits and enquiries to private-hire and events pages.
- How many reviews come in, and the average rating over time.
Worth knowing
What customers check, and the rules to follow.
What customers look for before they call
- Honest, recent photos of the space, the bar and the food on an ordinary night.
- Capacities, layouts and what's included for private hire, so organisers can see it'll work before they ask.
- Up-to-date hours, kitchen times and an events calendar that match what Google shows.
- A steady run of recent Google reviews, with replies that show someone's paying attention.
- The practical stuff: step-free access, dogs, parking and how to get there.
Rules worth knowing
- Any ad featuring alcohol has to follow the CAP Code's alcohol rules, including not appealing to under-18s, and Meta applies age restrictions to alcohol advertising.
- Information on the 14 regulated allergens must be available to customers, and for food ordered online for delivery or collection, it has to be available before the order is placed.
- Prices you show online should include any compulsory charges, with any discretionary service charge labelled plainly as optional.
- If guests can be identified in photos or video, you need their agreement, particularly for paid ads.
Straight answer
Is it right for you?
Best as a long game. It's strongest for venues with private hire to sell, paired with Meta Ads for short-term event pushes.
Made for
- Pubs and venues with function rooms or spaces that organisers search for.
- Bars and cafés in crowded town-centre locations.
- Venues in tourist areas where visitors search before they travel.
Not for
- Venues that need a lift for one event next week. That's a job for ads.
- Businesses in locations where very few people search for venues online.
Starting price
From £349
per month, fixed management fee
What moves the price
- How competitive the market is
- The current site's technical health
- How much content is planned each month
- Whether local search and maps are in scope
Your ad budget is separate. It goes straight to the platform and is never marked up.
Questions
SEO for hospitality businesses: your questions answered
Is Google Business Profile more important than the website for a pub?
For quick decisions like where to go tonight, the profile often wins. For private hire and bigger occasions, most people click through and compare venue pages. Both matter. The SEO work keeps them accurate and consistent together.
How long does SEO take to make a difference for a venue?
Profile improvements can show within weeks. New private-hire or feature pages usually take a few months to build visibility, depending on local competition. It's a steady build, and no ranking can be guaranteed.
Start a conversation
Tell Arête about the business and what currently feels missing.
You will receive a direct reply with the most sensible next step, even if that means recommending that nothing needs changing yet.
A direct reply
A personal reply, usually within one working day. No sales script, no chasing.
A short conversation
A look at the business, your current website and what a good result would look like for you.
A clear recommendation
The leanest sensible next step, with fixed scope and a fixed price. Sometimes that's nothing yet, and you'll be told so.
Prefer email? Write to info@aretemarketing.co.uk.